Digital
Indian digital journalism in 2025 was fragmented, says Delcom’s Vikram Singh
Delcom News co-founder on trust, algorithms, regional scale and the end of click-chasing
MUMBAI: Indian digital journalism in 2025 was shaped not by audience scale but by fragmented attention, collapsing trust and fundamental shifts in how content reaches readers. That is the assessment of Delcom News co-founder, chief journalist and chief platform architect Vikram Singh, who argues that publishers now operate in an environment where readers discover news passively rather than seeking it actively, loyalty has become rare, and credibility represents the industry’s most valuable asset.
Search engines, once the dominant gateway to news, have steadily ceded ground to social feeds, messaging applications and algorithm-driven interfaces. Traditional models of audience building have given way to a more chaotic landscape where publishers compete not just for eyeballs but for fleeting moments of attention across multiple platforms. The challenge, he suggests, lies less in reaching large numbers than in maintaining any meaningful connection with readers over time.
Indian Television Dot Com explores more about it in an interview with Singh.
If you had to describe Indian digital journalism in 2025 in one word, what would it be and why?
Fragmented. Indian digital journalism in 2025 was fragmented because attention, trust, language preferences, and platforms are all moving in different directions at once. Audiences are split across apps, short-form video, messaging platforms, regional-language ecosystems, and a handful of trusted news destinations. There is no single dominant gateway anymore. For publishers, this fragmentation means scale alone is no longer the marker of success—credibility, clarity of positioning, and repeat engagement matter far more than raw reach.
What was the single most important shift in digital news publishing this year?
The decisive shift was in distribution.Traffic moved away from search-led discovery to feeds, messaging apps, and creator- or algorithm-led surfaces. News organisations can no longer assume intent-driven discovery; instead, they must earn attention in passive environments. This has forced publishers to rethink headlines, formats, and even newsroom workflows—optimising not just for relevance, but for interruption in a crowded feed.
Did 2025 confirm or challenge your assumptions about how Indians consume news online?
It largely confirmed them but with a critical nuance. Mobile-first and video-first consumption are now defaults across age groups. What changed was the weight audiences place on trust. Reach without credibility no longer converts into loyalty. Audiences may sample widely, but they are increasingly selective about which brands they return to for verification, context, and depth.
What surprised you most about audience behaviour across websites, apps and social platforms?
What stood out was the contrast between breadth and loyalty. Audiences skim across dozens of sources daily, but they emotionally commit to just one or two brands they trust. This reinforces the idea that news consumption today is less about habit through volume, and more about habit through reliability and relevance.
Did digital audiences become more discerning in 2025, or simply more fatigued and scroll-happy?
They became both. Scroll behaviour increased, but tolerance dropped sharply. Audiences are quicker than ever to disengage from content that feels repetitive, shallow, or engineered purely for clicks. This fatigue has ironically made users more discerning—forcing publishers to earn every second of attention.
Which formats actually retained attention this year—short-form video, explainers, newsletters, live blogs or long-form reads?
Each format played a distinct role. Short-form video was unmatched in driving reach and discovery. However, explainers and newsletters were the strongest drivers of retention and habit. Long-form reads still performed well when tied to high-trust subjects, while live blogs remained event-specific utilities rather than loyalty builders.
Which 2025 events genuinely moved the needle for digital news in terms of scale and loyalty—and by how much?
National elections and extreme weather events were the most consequential. They drove traffic spikes of 2–4 times across platforms and, more importantly, led to double-digit improvements in app retention for publishers that invested in real-time explainers, local context, and verification-led reporting. These moments reinforced the value of being dependable under pressure.
Are audiences actively seeking news on digital platforms, or encountering it passively through algorithms?
Discovery is largely passive. Algorithms and social feeds now act as the front door to news. Active seeking still exists but it is reserved for major national moments or for brands that audiences already trust. This places greater responsibility on publishers to build recall and credibility outside breaking-news cycles.
What kinds of stories truly cut through the noise online in 2025?
Stories that respected the audience’s time and intelligence. Service journalism, hyperlocal relevance, clear explainers, and practical “what this means for you” narratives performed consistently well. Content that stripped away jargon and focused on outcomes, not opinions, earned stronger engagement.
Was 2025 the most dangerous year yet for misinformation online or the year it became most visible and contested?
It was the year misinformation became impossible to ignore. The scale and speed of false narratives forced platforms, publishers, and even audiences to acknowledge the cost of inaction. While misinformation remains a serious threat, 2025 marked a turning point where verification, labeling, and source transparency began to regain importance.
Did the pressure to be first on digital platforms make newsrooms more vulnerable to errors and misinformation?
Yes, particularly in live and social formats. The race for speed still often overrides verification. Newsrooms that lacked clear editorial guardrails or fact-checking layers were more exposed. The long-term lesson is clear: being first no longer guarantees trust, but being wrong guarantees loss of it.
Did regional-language digital platforms outperform English and national players in 2025?
Absolutely. Regional platforms consistently outperformed in engagement and loyalty. Their advantage came from cultural fluency, local relevance, and stronger emotional resonance with audiences. This trend underscores the future of Indian digital journalism as multilingual, decentralized, and community-driven.
What should digital news organisations stop doing immediately?
They should stop chasing clicks at the cost of trust. Low-quality, low-credibility content may inflate short-term metrics but erodes long-term value. Publishers must shift focus from traffic spikes to products and formats audiences return to daily, whether through apps, newsletters, or trusted explainers. In 2025, sustainability comes from loyalty, not virality.
Digital
Bartronics India unveils AI-powered voice app to scale agritech platform
HYDERABAD: Bartronics India Limited is stepping up its agritech ambitions with plans to launch a voice-first, multilingual AI-powered application in March, following a successful pilot across Maharashtra and Uttar Pradesh.
The pilot phase saw strong engagement from farmers, supported by assured produce off-take through partnerships with SNN and Origo Commodities. Drawing on on-ground feedback, the company is now upgrading the platform to enable deeper interaction, data-driven intelligence and scalable adoption across rural markets.
At the heart of the revamp is AI-enabled voice interaction in major regional languages, including English, Hindi, Marathi, Telugu and Kannada. The voice recognition and conversational agent framework is being developed by Ampivo Smart Technologies, aimed at transforming the app into an intuitive digital assistant for farmers.
Once launched, the platform will offer voice navigation, real-time alerts, contextual advisories, educational tools and interactive knowledge support, designed to improve decision-making across the agricultural value chain.
The application will also capture consent-led farmer data to connect users with electronic mandis and wider marketplaces, while enabling participation in sustainability-linked initiatives such as carbon credit programmes.
Bartronics India managing director Vidhya Sagar Reddy, said the voice-first approach reflects how rural communities naturally engage with technology and forms the foundation of a broader rural intelligence layer under Project Avio Agritech. The company aims to onboard 20 million farmers over the next three years.
Bartronics India currently operates across nearly 5,000 villages, delivering last-mile banking and digital financial services, and is expanding into integrated agritech and agri-trade solutions through its Project Avio platform.
Digital
Messi magic kicks off in India as immersive football experience lands
MUMBAI: When football dreams need a passport, Lionel Messi is ready to stamp it. The Messi Experience – A Dream Come True, the internationally touring immersive exhibition dedicated to one of sport’s most influential figures, is heading to India this March as part of its 2026 world tour. After successful runs across Buenos Aires, Puerto Rico, Panama, Beijing, Chicago, Mexico City, Miami, Los Angeles and São Paulo, the exhibition will make its India debut in Mumbai on March 20, 2026, before moving to Bengaluru from June 19, 2026. The shows will be staged at Century Mills in Lower Parel, Mumbai, and Bhartiya City Mall in Bengaluru.
Produced and promoted by Bookmyshow Live, the experience promises to pull fans inside Messi’s journey, not just his match highlights. “I am thrilled to see this project come to life and bring fans even closer to me both on and off the field,” Messi said, adding that the exhibition would allow Indian fans to relive the most unforgettable moments of his career.
Designed as a 75-minute, multi-sensory walkthrough, the exhibition unfolds across nine themed zones, blending artificial intelligence, immersive environments and exclusive content. Visitors can train like Messi, step into recreated match moments and explore personal stories that shaped his rise from his early days in Rosario to lifting the World Cup trophy in Qatar.
Bookmyshow chief business officer for live events Naman Pugalia said the India debut marks a milestone for football fandom in the country. He described Messi as a global cultural icon whose story transcends sport, adding that the exhibition reflects the company’s ambition to bring world-class immersive entertainment to Indian audiences.
Beyond the storytelling, the experience also features an official merchandise store and an activation zone, extending engagement beyond the exhibition halls. Whether for lifelong fans or first-time followers, The Messi Experience aims to turn football history into a walk-in memory, one that lets India play along with a living legend.
Digital
Work stress tops India’s mental health talk, not heartbreak or headlines
MUMBAI: When India opens up about mental health, the conversation keeps clocking in at work. A new conversation analysis by Consuma, an AI-native consumer insights platform, shows that workplace pressures are the most frequently discussed trigger in online conversations around mental health awareness in India. The study analysed 136,695 public conversations across Twitter, Reddit, Youtube and Instagram between January 1 and December 31, 2025. Within a focused subset of 20,272 conversations that explicitly discussed what triggers mental health awareness, nearly half 49.72 per cent pointed to work-related stressors, making employment the single largest trigger category online.
The findings echo concerns flagged at the policy level. India’s Economic Survey 2024–25 has already warned that hostile work environments and long working hours can hurt mental wellbeing and productivity. Online conversations suggest employees are feeling the strain long before policy catches up.
Among work-related triggers, poor work–life balance dominates the discussion at 24.37 per cent, followed by general workplace stress at 21.85 per cent and toxic work culture at 15.90 per cent. Long working hours account for 9.57 per cent of mentions, while job insecurity features in 7.50 per cent.
The numbers are backed by sharp, candid commentary. One user writes, “Most Indian employers overcomplicate employee wellness. Let people work async. Let them go for a run in the afternoon. Let them sleep in when their body needs it.”
Consuma notes that these findings apply only to conversations that explicitly discuss triggers for mental health awareness, not the entire universe of mental health discussions online.
The data shows that mental health discourse in India is overwhelmingly driven by adults in their prime working years. People aged 25–34 contribute 50.51 per cent of conversations, while those aged 35–44 account for 34.35 per cent. Together, they represent 84.86 per cent of the discussion.
Work stress, however, is not acting alone. Societal and educational pressures make up 33.98 per cent of trigger conversations, including societal expectations (14.42 per cent), academic pressure (13.92 per cent) and parental pressure (6.09 per cent). One widely echoed sentiment reads, “Indian parents will raise you with a roof over your head, food in your stomach, and shame in your soul.”
Taken together, the data points to a compounding “pressure stack” faced by working-age Indians balancing career demands alongside cultural expectations, education-linked anxiety and family pressure, all while chasing conventional life milestones.
Interestingly, the conversation is not limited to venting. Of the 26,311 conversations analysed for broader mental health themes, discussion is almost evenly split between core challenges (48.05 per cent) and solutions or support systems (43.81 per cent).
Mental health crises dominate the challenge cluster at 32.58 per cent, followed by stigma and lack of awareness at 20.27 per cent. On the solutions side, people lean towards culturally familiar, self-directed approaches rather than institutional pathways. Holistic practices such as music therapy and spiritual wisdom account for 17.34 per cent, practical stress management for 13.72 per cent, celebrity-led awareness for 7.64 per cent and government initiatives for 6.51 per cent.
The shift suggests that people are not only asking “what’s wrong?” but increasingly “what can I do?”even if the answers remain personal and decentralised.
Consuma’s analysis also zooms in on women’s health conversations, where mental wellbeing outweighs physical health topics. Among 1,934 women’s health conversations analysed, mental health accounts for 51.14 per cent, surpassing reproductive and gynaecological health at 37.07 per cent.
Younger adults dominate this space, with 18–44-year-olds contributing over 81 per cent of the discussion. In women’s health awareness triggers (3,489 conversations), societal factors lead at 45.2 per cent, closely followed by mental health drivers at 41.7 per cent.
Healthcare-related challenges appear less frequently at 7.4 per cent, but the tone is striking. Misdiagnosis and medical gaslighting recur as trust-breaking themes. One user notes: “Going to doctors is useless in India as a woman. First, they tell you to lose weight… Then they tell you that you are imagining it or that you are sensitive.”
The report was generated using Consuma’s AI-powered Rapid Research Platform. The dataset was cleaned for noise and duplicates and classified using a multi-coding methodology. Source-wise, the conversations came from Youtube (77,544), Twitter (41,121), Reddit (9,283) and Instagram (8,747).
In a digital space often crowded with noise, the findings paint a consistent picture, for India’s online audience, mental health conversations begin not in therapy rooms or hospitals, but at the workplace and the clock is still ticking.
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